(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display.
(b) Description of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is one of the most widely used flat panel displays (FPD), and it is composed of two display panels on which field generating electrodes such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode are formed, and a liquid crystal layer interposed between the two display panels. A voltage is applied to the field generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the liquid crystal layer, and the orientation of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer is determined and the polarization of incident light is controlled through the generated electric field to display an image.
The liquid crystal display includes switching elements each connected to pixel electrodes, and a plurality of signal lines such as data lines and gate lines for applying voltages to the pixel electrodes by controlling the switching elements. Each gate line transfers a gate signal generated from a gate driving circuit, and each data line transfers a data voltage generated from a data driving circuit. The switching element transfers a data voltage to a pixel electrode according to the gate signal.
The gate driving circuit and data driving circuit are typically directly mounted on a display panel in the form of a plurality of IC chips. Alternatively, the gate driving circuit and data driving circuit are mounted on a flexible circuit layer and the flexible circuit layer is attached on a display panel. Such IC chips are responsible for a large percentage of the manufacturing cost of a liquid crystal display. Particularly, since the data driver IC chips are much more expensive than the gate driving circuit IC chips, it is necessary to reduce the number of data driver IC chips for a high resolution and large liquid crystal display. The manufacturing cost of the gate driving circuit can be reduced by integrating the gate driving circuit to the display panel with a gate line, a data line, and a switching element. However, it is very difficult to integrate the data driving circuit to the display panel because the data driving circuit has a complicated structure. Therefore, a reduction of the number of data driver ICs is required.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.